"Dr Montaner explained how, with the support of the provincial government in British Columbia, his team was able to discover and implement the so-called Antiretroviral ‘triple therapy cocktail’ which stopped the progression of HIV infection to AIDS and premature death. The result, he said, is that a young person who becomes infected with HIV today can be treated with these drugs and have a near normal life expectancy of around 75 years.

An even bigger breakthrough came , Dr Montaner continued, when researchers noticed that, despite increases in risky sexual behaviour among HIV-infected persons, the rate of new infections among those treated with the ARV drugs continued to decrease. This lead them to the conclusion that the treatment was not only stopping progression of the disease but also stopping transmission of the once-deadly HIV virus."